To love them as we love ourselves

También la lluvia (Even the rain)

Crit

You can't say this film is devious about its point of view: the first words on the screen are a dedication to Howard Zinn, whose death I'd already forgotten and whose People's History of the United States I still haven't read, but this year, I promise!

That point of view is an unsubtle polemic against imperialist exploitation, and it might have seemed like a sermon but for a structure calculated to draw in movie weenies like me: it's one of those movies about making a movie! A director (Gael García Bernal) pursues his vision: the Columbus story through the filter of the conscience-ravaged priests Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolome de las Casas, anti-imperialists avant la lettre. But of course the film crew is itself imperialist and exploitative of the indigenous Bolivians (right: that Columbus never got anywhere near there is just one of the wicked jokes about the industry that no movie about moviemaking can be without) being paid two bucks a day to work as extras.

And then there are the capitalists that don't even have the socially redeeming value of potential art: the multinational corporation granted rights to privatize the water supply by the corrupt government. Did I mention that "evenhandedness" is not among the virtues to which the film aspires? Anyway, being a guilty liberal, I liked the hell out of it, though I was a little disappointed that the twist I anticipated in the final plot element inspiring the conscientious rebirth of the producer (Luis Tosar)--even my heart can be overwarmed.

The most astonishing performance is given by Juan Carlos Aduviri, who plays the Quechua rabble-rouser Daniel, who in turn plays the Taino rabble-rouser Hatuey--a character so vital to the (nested) film that the filmmakers demand that he shelve his principles at least until all his scenes are shot. My guess is that the real-life filmmakers brought Aduviri into the biz much as the film-within-the-a-film filmmakers did Daniel, who in his capacity as water-rights activist gets the film's best speech, the one whence its title (which ultimately, of course, derives from e. e. cummings). It doesn't seem to be online, so I'll paraphrase: the powerful demand the right to take everything, even the rain; what next: our tears, our sweat? All they'll get from me is my piss.

Dude's got a future as a populist politician.